


Lacrimae Mundi

by aderyn



Series: Natural Facts [25]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: excerpts as 221B's, music & murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-05
Updated: 2012-05-05
Packaged: 2017-11-04 21:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/398166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Follow me and I’ll follow you; voices following one another and never ending…it’s quite a poetic idea. Graft a puzzle onto it, a mystery, a *case*, and it's dead romantic...  </p>
<p>John listens to Sherlock picking out the puzzle on the violin and thinks oh, I will, I will always."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lacrimae Mundi

**Author's Note:**

> These are sort-of excerpts from “Canon,” a longer thing I’m working on. ([Oh Yeah](http://archiveofourown.org/works/397448) is too.)
> 
> With so many thanks to Chapbook! (see endnotes)
> 
> Canon: A musical form in which the melody is imitated by individual parts at regular intervals. The individual parts may enter at different measures and pitches. The tune may also be played at different speeds, backwards, or inverted.

 

John has recently found Sherlock in these dubious positions:

Holding a suspect by the throat in the long shadow of a rail trestle.

Staring cross-eyed at a sheet of musical notation and muttering something about eye music.

Pulling from underneath a sheet of industrial-grade plastic the body of Ellison Fang, violinist, singer, seeker of trouble, 16.

Now he’s found him vomiting repeatedly into the kitchen sink at 2 am.

“All right,” John says, standing by.

He puts his hand on the back of Sherlock’s neck, which feels like cooling ash.

“It’s nothing,” says Sherlock, coughing.

“All right.”

The cycle of retching stops. Sherlock straightens, leans back on the edge of sink, his pupils chasing one another back and forth across John’s face.

John takes down a glass, leans in for the tap.

“Have this,” he says.

Sherlock drinks. There’s a single track of salt water down his right cheek.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m fine.” Sherlock sets the glass down, turns his face away.

John’s hands are this close to steadying range, but he doesn’t. Lets the darkness of their kitchen and the dripping tap and the low hum of the (empty) fridge do it for him.

When they found him, Ellison Fang, violinist, he was already gone, marks on his cheeks, his pupils gone fixed, black, a doll’s eyes, the hour before.

*******

At 3:30 Sherlock’s at the music stand, nails shining, scribbling frantically in violet ink, humming.

John’s up again, limping downstairs, his _adductor brevis_ sprung, his shoulder tingling, the nerves alive.

“Can’t sleep?”

Sherlock looks a little better; there’s some light in his face.

“Not yet.”

He plays a few bars, eyes shut.  It’s the canon again, the puzzle, the mystery Sherlock says has no logical, musical means of ending: Follow me and I’ll follow you; voices following one another and never stopping…it’s quite a poetic idea. Graft a riddle onto it, a mystery, a _case_ , and it's dead romantic. 

But no, it’s sorrowful. It’s a perpetual vale of tears.  It’s Ellison Fang, too late, too young, too much in trouble to save, even for you, even for you.

John listens to Sherlock picking out the puzzle on the violin and thinks _oh, I will, I will always._

_Will you?_

_Will you?_

_It’s enough._

_It’s enough._

_(Requies aeterna,_ Ellison Fang. _Lacrimae mundi_ , the tears of the world.)

Together by the window Sherlock and John, standing watch over their city, its infinite music.

John doesn’t know why, doesn’t think about it, just puts his fingers on the space between Sherlock's fifth and sixth ribs and he can feel something move there that is beyond breath, beyond the cycles and notations of the body.

**Author's Note:**

> I asked for musical ideas—something that might interest Sherlock-- and Chapbook gave me (along with a whole treasure trove of imitative music) Renaissance puzzle canons, in which some of the voices are unwritten, a mystery to be solved; that’s the inspiration for this.
> 
> A solved puzzle canon: [DuFay's Agnus Dei movement from his Mass "L'homme arme" (The Armed Man)](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWyGfK4k2bs&feature=relmfu) Beautiful!


End file.
